Very interesting interview, thanks for posting OP.
I used to run a Freespace fan site back around 1998 called the "Terran Tactical Database" (horrible name, but I was pretty young). Those were the golden days of the web - sites were small and you had free hosting available pretty much anywhere. All you needed was to learn a little bit of HTML and e-mail a game developer to tell them you had a fan site.
Adam Pletcher was my primary contact around that time for news and screenshots. I remember he was always pretty quick to respond when I had a question, though part of that was probably because they were a small studio and needed any kind of marketing they could get. My name is in Freespace 1 in the "special thanks" section - I was the envy of all my friends at the time.
When Freespace 2 rolled around, they sent me a disc with the multiplayer beta. Someone at the Volition offices burned it and hand wrote "Freespace 2 Beta" on it. They had to snail-mail it back on those days - way too big to download over a 28.8 modem. They also sent me a Freespace 2 poster that I think I still have somewhere.
It's a very good game series, I really wish they would revive it. It's interesting how they talked about the lack of PC gamers owning joysticks. That seems like a bit of a catch-22. They say nobody has a joystick, but that's probably because nobody is making games that require them anymore. I bet if Freespace 3 or a re-make of X-Wing or TIE Fighter came out tomorrow you'd see a resurgence among joystick users. There are plenty of flight simulators out there, but nothing in the space combat genre has been seen in years.
